


Taking Matters in Hand

by Starla-Nell (Princess_Nell)



Series: The Bournshire Boys [20]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Fantasy, Friendship, Mentioned Voyeurism, Roommates, solo masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24756175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Nell/pseuds/Starla-Nell
Summary: Alistair puts his lessons to use, resulting in a conversation between Alistair and Cullen. (Friendship only in this particular series.)
Series: The Bournshire Boys [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/472279
Kudos: 2





	Taking Matters in Hand

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is the story of Alistair & Cullen growing up, including this section’s exploration contrasting how they think about sex. Some of those ideas are formed during explicit moments, and that’s what this work explores. I believe there’s value in sharing and discussing our experiences, first or otherwise (as Zevran will later suggest during Origins.) If you’re not interested in that but are curious about how the friendship between Alistair & Cullen might be affected by the issue, then read as far as you like and skip to “Something nagged urgently in the background.” They’ll still be more-or-less talking about sex and related topics.

“Weren’t you going to play chess this evening?” Alistair stood in the isle between the desks, pleased with himself for this invention.

He hadn’t tried it before, hadn’t known it was okay. It was embarrassing enough to get _those_ dreams and the resulting emissions. He’d gotten the impression that touching anything, um, down there… was dirty, wrong. Sister Sienna’s suggestion was liberating. He could learn more about… that… without actually involving the girls – girl, if he was honest with himself – who inspired it.

Alistair hadn’t wanted to be obvious, so he tried to get a little privacy during their regular schedule. For two weeks. It was an incredibly frustrating experiment. He’d get all worked up, then something would not work. He’d tried the privy – too many other recruits going in and out, audible through the stalls. Lunch hour – too hungry, even if he started horny. Lunch was the largest break on their schedules when Cullen wasn’t in the room. For both privacy and time, it looked like he would have to get his roommate out of the way.

Cullen was sprawled out on his bed, studying some book or another. “What? No. Who would I play chess with?”

“I dunno. Drystan?” Alistair couldn’t stand the guy, but Cullen didn’t seem to share that opinion. He always did act better around Cullen, and he had been more cordial lately, even with Alistair.

“No, Drystan and Farris found some younger recruits with passes into town, and managed to get themselves invited.”

Flames. “It must have been Sieffre, then. I’m sure you were playing chess with someone this afternoon.” Alistair was getting a little frantic. “Maybe you should check.”

Cullen looked at Alistair, then at the book he had been studying, probably weighing the benefits to his training.

“Powers alone don’t neutralize magic. You have to go in with a plan.”

Cullen laughed! And he relented: “Alright, Alistair. If it means that much to you, I’ll go see if Sieffre is available.” Cullen stood up, stretching. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what this is about?”

Alistair contrived to look innocent, but Cullen probably knew by now how mischievous he actually was. “I’m just concerned that Sieffre might be wondering where you are by now.”

“Right. Okay, I’m going, I’m going. Just, don’t do anything weird to my stuff.” Cullen left the room.

The feeling of triumph faded as Alistair stood in the middle of the room, trying to figure out how to get started. Outside, the early summer bugs rattled their songs at each other in the soft daylight as the air cooled. He closed the window and covered it with the spare curtain.

He’d had more than one occasion, of course, to be infinitely glad that templar recruit uniform trousers were loose, and the tunics long. There had been the time a Circle mage had come to test the recruits’ ability to resist magic. She had been attractive, but Alistair hadn’t had problems until she’d cast a low-level lightening spell. The jolt had gone straight to his balls, and caused some really embarrassing bulging that Alistair preferred to think of as hidden by those loose garments.

Another time, he’d been the lucky bastard chosen for demonstrating the effectiveness of full plate. The demonstration by the instructor had caused some unexpected vibrations. Hello! Full plate didn’t give much … wiggle room … but at least nothing was visible.

Most embarrassing of all, though, was when Lileas from the kitchens had bent over in front of him, tantalizingly and almost too far over for decency. He hadn’t really thought about how short her skirts were before that, but now when he was in the kitchens he thought of little else.

A twitch from below his belt told him he was on the right track.

Alistair swallowed and decided he needed to be lying down. He pulled off his pants, tossed them onto the end of his bed, and laid down. Cullen wouldn’t be back from chess for hours, but Alistair felt weird to be so exposed. He scrabbled under the sheet. Yes, very sexy. He took a deep breath.

Okay, so short skirts. Alistair thought about descriptions he’d overheard in the locker room of what was under girls’ skirts. (Twitch.) He thought about the smooth brown legs that led up to the skirt, the curve of her… rear… and wondered what it would look like naked. 

Wow, when you weren’t in public, embarrassed, and trying to make sure no one saw anything, imagining a girl naked actually felt pretty good.

What else would work? Boobs. Alistair decided to stick with Lileas in his imagination, for consistency. Alistair could guess at each curve under her clothing. And if he got it wrong, who would know? Experimentally, he touched his shaft with his fingertips as he imagined it. A tiny moan caught at the back of his throat. He hadn’t meant to, was that normal? But it had felt so good, he had to try again.

She was just standing there, and that was weird. Could he? Well, it was his imagination, what did it hurt? It’s not like he would treat her any differently. He couldn’t just grab her, even in his imagination. He touched her, on the arm first, then slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder. How would she react to that? He took off his tunic and tried it on his own arm and shivered a bit. Oh, that felt delicious. He looked down at his chest and noticed that his nipples were hard even though it wasn’t cold. He slid his hand over one and it felt okay. He’d heard that nipples were sensitive, but that wasn’t much response. He got more out of it when he imagined doing the same thing to Lileas’ breast. Maybe lady nipples are more sensitive? He played with his own, imagined they were hers, and moaned as he wished he could hear her moan.

He wondered if there were other areas of his body he should know about. He tingled everywhere now and was completely hard, so he explored with his hands. Face and neck were interesting, stomach tickled a little which wasn’t so nice, legs were pretty great. He toyed with that for a while, finding the best spots and strokes and pressures. Ugh, Maker, inner thigh. Running his hands up and down the length of his body was arousing, too, especially if he imagined they were Lileas’ hands. He ran a hand through his own hair, enjoying the texture on his hand and the feeling over his scalp. Then he imagined what her hair would feel like: was her chocolate-brown hair soft or springy? He thought about how it moved. Springy, he decided, moaning again. He laid back and fell into the memory of her seductive, brown eyes, a memory reconstructed from glimpses. What was her neck like, under that long hair? _It’s summer again; she’ll be putting her hair up soon._ Why couldn’t he remember?

After some experimentation, he discovered he _needed_ to touch his… parts… again. He pressed his hand against himself, and bolts of joy shot to his toes and up his back. I’m so hard, he thought. Then he imagined Lileas saying it: _“You’re so hard.”_ Maker’s breath, he needed this. He imagined, again, that his open hand was hers, and began stroking up and down his length. _Why would she ever do this?_ He decided to work that out later. For now, the girl in his imagination was enthusiastically willing, and that was all he needed. Each stroke of his hand felt amazing, better than the last, and he wondered how much better it could get. _More_ , his body screamed. He wrapped his hand around his length and started experimenting with pressure. _How would he tell her what he liked?_ Another irrelevant thought, for now. Her hands were his hands. His other hand lay by his side, but it didn’t have to. He wrapped a second hand around his length, and the improvement caused his muscles to tighten impossibly, and he arced a few inches off the bed on his head and ass.

He slowed down a little, just to keep from crying out. Oh, that was nice, he could savor that. He slowed down further, and it felt different now. There were interesting spikes and lines of pleasure that played through his muscles. _Oh, yes._ Alistair _felt_ the next moan playing up the muscles in his back, and squeezed a little tighter with both hands as he turned his mouth to his pillow.

He needed things to be slicker, so he licked his palms thoroughly. _There has to be a better solution. Oil?_ He sped up just a little, not as much as he wanted to, but enough to double those spikes and lines of pleasure. Yet he was still in control. Mostly: a ripple of moans worked its way through his body. He turned to the pillow again before it escaped, shoving it to cover his whole mouth. He sped his hands up a little more, bucking against them for more pressure, and the moans wracked his body more frequently, fantasies forgotten. There was something about some of his strokes that _Oh, Maker,_ _yes_ , but what _was_ it? Then he found it: when he pulled the skin down enough that it tugged on the end… He figured that out, and found that he had to keep his head turned to the pillow continuously. Oh, _shit,_ oh, _fuck,_ how had he not known about this? Then he didn’t care, and the world turned to white _flame_ , and there was some sort of noise but he just couldn’t _care_ right now, he felt a rushing through his cock, shuddering through his body, could you tear a pillow apart with muffled noise? And then he lay there, catching his breath, eyes still closed, his stomach and chest covered in that same wet emission, but more of it.

Something nagged urgently in the background, something was wrong but it was still hard to care. He picked up his tunic to clean himself, and heard Cullen say, “Sweet Maker, I really didn’t need to see that.”

_Shit._

“Cullen!” Alistair grabbed for the sheet to cover himself again. It had gotten kicked off and forgotten in the… process.

Cullen was turned toward the trunk, which was at the end of his own bed. “Are you –covered?” he asked awkwardly.

“What are you doing here?” Alistair scrambled to clean himself while trying to keep covered in case Cullen turned anyway.

Cullen made a helpless noise. “Well, this is my room.” Of course.

“But you were playing chess. It takes you hours to play chess.”

“Yeah, except that you made that up! I talked with Sieffre for a while, but he wasn’t up for chess and we both have studying to do.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of his desk but kept his head turned away. Alistair finished cleaning, tossed the used tunic under the bed, and wrapped his sheet tightly around himself.

Alistair couldn’t stand the idea of talking to Cullen wrapped in a sheet. “I’m going to get clothes.”

Cullen gestured toward the chest-of-drawers as expansively as he could without turning away from the footlocker. Alistair scrambled up with his sheet, and dug through the drawers until he found a fresh tunic. He threw it on, then retrieved his trousers from the foot of his bed and threw them on, too. The sheet ended up on the floor, tangled. He moved it to the bed.

He felt like his face was going to burn up. A horrible question bubbled up, “Was there anyone behind you when you came in?”

“No, but there were people further down the hall.”

“Why didn’t you leave the room?” Alistair asked.

“Too shocked,” Cullen said, smiling. “Afraid I might be blind. Plus, the others in the hall would ask questions. Way faster to close the door and turn away. I didn’t see – much?” Wait, was Cullen … smiling? Could this be any worse?

“I’m dressed,” Alistair snapped.

“Thank the Maker.” Cullen turned around, faint smile still in place. “Well, this is awkward.” His voice cracked a little.

“I don’t – I’m not – It’s not something that I – I don’t do this, you know.”

Cullen looked appalled as he sat on his own bed. “But – why not?”

“It’s just that I”—Alistair blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Why don’t you? Wait. Don’t tell me you’ve actually wooed a _girl_?” Cullen was still addressing the wall, or the door, despite the current decency of everyone in the room.

“What? No! It’s just… this was…” Alistair’s voice trailed off in a mumble, “the first time really I tried it.”

Cullen’s laugh was high and short. Alistair didn’t laugh. “I had already, uh, tried it before I got here, but I guess that wouldn’t be likely for you. What were you, ten?” They studied different walls for a moment. “Wait, what about when you had no roommates?”

Alistair’s face didn’t feel like it would cool off any time soon. “I thought it was … wrong.”

Cullen made a noise similar to pffft. “It’s – it’s embarrassing, I’ll grant you that, but it’s necessary. Your body is going to do it anyway, might as well be a time and place and fantasy of your choosing.”

“Well, I didn’t know about that by the time you arrived. And I haven’t exactly gotten much privacy since!” Case in point. Alistair tried, again, not to think about what Cullen did or did not see. He put his head in his hands, arms propped up on his knees.

“Come to think of it, when would you?” Cullen mused. “You’re always either in public or I’m in the room.”

Alistair released his head and looked up. “Wait, when do you do it?”

“Evenings when you’re at kitchen duty. You’re in trouble often enough, I don’t usually have any problems.”

“Great, you _never_ get in trouble.” Alistair earned a hard look. “On your own,” he amended. This seemed to mollify Cullen.

“Look, you can kick me out,” he said. “Just don’t trick me into it. I’ll give you plenty of time, believe me, though this…” he waves a hand. “This was probably inevitable.”

“That seems a little awkward. Hey, Cullen, could you hit the road? I need to – to – I can’t even say it!”

“Too bad we don’t have locks on these doors,” Cullen mused. “Though that’s probably for good reason.”

“What about a code word?” Alistair suggested.

“A code word? Like, ‘Hey Cullen, weren’t you going to play chess today?’”

Alistair laughed. “Yeah, like that. See, I was using the code, I just skipped a step.”

“You mean the step where you tell me what the fade you’re talking about?” Cullen was laughing, too.

“That’s the one! Knew I missed something!” Alistair grinned, and they laughed for a bit. Then Alistair thought of something else. “Cullen, you said that you had started before you got here. Did you mean… what I was doing, but did you really mean … something else?” He checked for a reaction.

Cullen jumped a bit guiltily. “Something else? What do you mean?”

Alistair smiled. “You know. Wink-wink-nudge-nudge. Other stuff. Like girls?”

“How – how could you tell?”

Alistair fell over onto his bed. “What! You’ve gone all the way with a girl and you didn’t tell me?! I’m your roommate! What kind of friend are you?!”

Cullen waved his hands. “No, no! Not that! I never did – that!”

Alistair sat up. “Oh. Well, what _did_ you mean?”

\---

Cullen froze, cursed mentally, and he lied. “Nothing.” Badly. Cullen should never lie, it never goes well for him. Why even bother?

“Uh-huh,” Alistair said, clearly disbelieving. “You asked how I could tell. How could I tell what, Cullen? Huh? How could I tell what?”

Cullen realized that his secret wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as being walked in on during the climax of a good wank, so he relented. “All right! I give up! I’ll tell you!”

Alistair sat with his best good-student face on, which was pretty bad and kind of creepy, but it got his point across.

“There was a – swimming hole. The summer before I came here, a friend and I decided that the only thing better than swimming there would be – oh, I can’t believe I’m telling you this – watching girls swimming there.”

Alistair quirked one eyebrow, pulling his head back, chin tucked. “That’s it? You watched some girls strip down to their skivvies and take a dip?”

Cullen shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I don’t know why, but the girls in our area don’t like swimsuits.” That made Alistair perk up. “That was fine with us, but they didn’t exactly want to be stared at while they were swimming. So we … found a good place behind some bushes where we were fairly hidden, but we had a good view.” Now Cullen was blushing, but Alistair ignored that.

“Wait, so you’ve actually seen girls? Naked? Like completely naked? What’s it like?”

“It was fascinating. We would watch them for an hour, sometimes more: as long as they would swim.”

Alistair ignored Cullen’s misery. “No, I mean their … parts. Their lady bits.”

“Oh! You’ve never – talked with someone about this before?”

“Well, yeah, but overheard talk from stable hands isn’t exactly reliable. And since I got here? Locker room talk isn’t much better, probably. Who would I talk to?” Alistair gestured widely, and Cullen realized that, no, Alistair hadn’t had anyone to talk to before he got there.

“Ah. Okay. Ahem. Well, the top is … like you’d expect. Breasts look soft and kind of … squishy. They bounce a little, when they jump. The … lower part – in front, I mean – is kind of rounded, but it also has a slit in the middle.”

“That’s what I heard!” Alistair said encouragingly.

“Yeah. Vertical. I asked my older sister, and she said that’s what girls use to pee. My _dad_ said it hid other parts, useful for… it. That. You know.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Weird.”

“Uh huh.”

Alistair broke out into a grin. “So, you’re a real perv, huh?”

“Shut up!” Cullen threw his pillow at Alistair’s laughing head, resulting in a satisfying thwap!

**Author's Note:**

> Lady nipples are not more sensitive, as Alistair will find next time he has privacy. (Not written.) 
> 
> Nipples can be wired, and Alistair accidentally stumbled upon the process of doing that for himself.


End file.
